Nancy Chodorow and Eli Zaretsky

‘Psychoanalysis and Feminism’: Rejoinder to Wollheim

We would like to respond to Richard Wollheim’s review (nlr 93) of Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism. The Left and the women’s movement traditionally reject Freud as a biological determinist. Mitchell’s book sought to redeem him by presenting a social and cultural reading of psychoanalytic theory. The basis of Wollheim’s criticism is that Mitchell overestimates ‘culture’ and ignores ‘biology’. According to him, human psychology is, in essence, biologically determined, and this is the basis of psychoanalytic theory.